Saturday, October 26, 2013

Guest Author ~ Cora Zane

This afternoon I have
the pleasure of presenting author Cora Zane.Cora is multi-published in multiple genres and has a new release
out!

Thanks for visiting
Cora!

Hi
Nancy! Thanks for hosting me on your blog. I have a new collection out just in
time for Halloween.

A
Trick of Light: Four Supernatural Short Stories is available now on
Smashwords. I'll be releasing a print edition through my personal print
label, Grrl X Publishing, later this year.

About
A Trick of LightA Trick of Light is a collection of four supernatural short stories.
Find out how an old letter puts a woman face to face with a spectral train.
Read the lost diary of a family man forced to make difficult choices in the
midst of the zombie apocalypse. Witness a rebel angel's final battle against
one of his own kind. A Trick of Light...where nothing is quite as it
seems.

I found it along with a string of other old mementos in a
dusty straw purse at the bottom of an antique armoire. I’d
been clearing out Nana’s things for a few weeks, ever since my brothers
insisted we finally sell the farm.

While it pained me to see this chunk of property end up outside of
the family circle, I had to agree the house was located too far away
from the rest of us, and no one had the time or money for the upkeep. Selling
was the only way to ensure the place would receive the proper routine
maintenance an older home requires.

As it happened, once we’d all in agreed to this, the sad task of
sorting Nana’s things fell to me. Among the remnants of her long life, the
purse I uncovered in the armoire seemed at first like another one of those
treasures too personal to throw out.

Embroidered with purple and mauve thistles and other decorative
fronds sewn right onto the weave, the bag had no closure, only two round cane
handles that when held together closed the purse. Lovely, but dated.

My grandmother had always liked things like that, items that had
been in style during her heyday, which was somewhere around the time of the
Second World War. By the looks of it, this bag had been very well loved, and I
pulled it from the drawer, my heart aching and missing her. I was disappointed
to discover on closer inspection that the bag was flat as an old shoe and
crushed toward the bottom.

I decided it wasn’t worth salvaging after all. That stung a
little because something about the purse drew me—I couldn’t have guessed what,
since I certainly had no use for a straw bag.

Nevertheless, I checked inside for anything important and
found an embroidered hair ribbon, a powder compact with a cracked mirror, a
packet of tissues, and an old letter, which was resting on its side and
pressed flat against the inner lining of the bag.

I tossed the other things into the trash bin and turned my
attention to the letter, which was folded four square, the paper amber with
age. It had crumpled from moisture like the dried petals of a pressed flower,
and I opened it very carefully so the corner folds didn’t tear.

I don’t know what I expected exactly, that maybe it was an old
love letter from my grandfather. He’d been a man of few words, although at some
point he’d bragged to us grandkids about the wooing of his lovely Rosalie. I’d
been about ten or so when he’d told us the story of how he’d stolen our nana
from another man, a soldier who, at the time, had been stationed in Hawaii, or
some other far-flung place.

I thought about that story now and decided whatever this letter
turned out to be, it was obviously something special for Nana to have kept it
all these years. After Grandpa died, I’d asked her if there were any personal
letters she’d saved from him. I’d wanted to add them to the family archive I’d
been building for the last thirty years or so, but she told me that if there
had been any letters, she definitely didn’t have them now. She’d never been
much of a “pen and paper gal”, she’d explained. A good thing, I suppose, since
Grandpa apparently never had much inclination to express, in written form at
least, any poetic feelings he might’ve had for her.

So this new find was a curiosity. I looked at the letter as an
unusual artifact to add to the family scrapbook. The rarity of it excited me,
even though it saddened me a little to imagine my grandparents young and in
love. After all, that was another life, and Nana had not been gone from us for
very long. Grief still nagged me at the slightest provocation.

I smoothed the letter flat against my thigh, glad to see that the
ink remained fair. The body of the text was still legible; the words had only
bled a tiny bit. I lifted the page to see it better in the window light and
read the first few words. An odd chill came over me.

Dearest Rosalie,

I know all about him. I wish I didn’t, but I can’t change what is.
I love you even now, and despite what your mother says, there is still time for
you to change your mind. I will be arriving at Kilkirkin Station at 7:15 p.m.
If you love me still, meet me there. Even if you cannot bring yourself to come
away with me in the end, at the very least, I would have you stand face to face
with me and tell me goodbye. I will be waiting.